New Social and Affordable Homes: Blaydon and Consett

13. What steps he is taking to build more social and affordable homes in Blaydon and Consett constituency.

Me again, Mr Speaker. We remain focused on implementing the five-step plan we published in July last year to deliver a decade of social and affordable housing renewal. We received incredibly ambitious bids for our £39 billion social and affordable homes programme and are in the process of assessing them with a view to a timely announcement of allocations. As Members will know, our Social Housing Bill, which will give affordable housing providers the clarity and confidence they need to build more social homes, is also making good progress in the other place.

For 14 years, the Conservatives presided over a house building crisis that locked a generation out of home ownership and left social housing in short supply. In Blaydon and Consett, my constituents have been calling for years for more social and affordable housing to be built. Will the Minister say how this Government are going the extra mile to ensure that we deliver on the calls of my constituents for more social homes?

My hon. Friend is right. I would go further than she did: I think the previous Government deliberately set out to engineer the decline of social rented housing, not least through the reforms that they made to the right to buy, which we are reversing through the Social Housing Bill. As I made clear, we received ambitious bids from affordable housing providers across the country, including in the north-east. That will allow councils and housing associations to start using the grant to build at scale once again.